National Taichung Theater: Bringing to life one of the world's most structurally challenging building designs

From design competition to completion, Arup’s structural engineers played a key role to realise this highly complex building.

The 6-storey building incorporates a 2,009-seat grand theatre with an opera stage, an 800-seat playhouse and a 200-seat ‘black box’, covering a total floor area of 36,000m².  

Computational design 

As one of the most structural ambitious spaces we have worked on since the Sydney opera house, the National Taichung Theater has rewritten the rulebook. Its standout geometries – a doubly curved shell and continuous single surface interior – could not have been achieved even a decade ago. State-of-the-art computational tools and innovative construction techniques have made it possible.

Bringing the 'Maze' to life

We introduced the idea of creating a maze - interlocking truss walls and mixing pre-fabricated forms with in-situ casting to reduce construction costs and accentuate the purity of the radically expressive architecture form.

The maze was prefabricated, brought on site and overlaid with a fine mesh. Concrete was then poured between this meshes to flesh out the continuous curved surface that blur the distinction between floor, wall and ceiling.

Mixing high-concept ideas with simple construction methods, we have brought the architect’s bold vision to life.